ICC Note:
An estimated 3,000 people from various organizations participated in protests against India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, during his visit to California in the United States. People held signs and chanted slogans calling the Prime Minister out for his alleged ill-treatment of India’s minorities, including religious minorities. Since taking office last year, attacks on India’s religious minorities, especially Muslims and Christians, has increased by over 25%. Will the world start to take notice of this issue and hold India accountable for the human rights abuses being perpetrated against its religious minority communities?
10/1/2015 India (India West) – An estimated 3,000 people from various Bay Area organizations lined up outside the SAP Center Sept. 27 afternoon to protest Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged ill-treatment and indifference to the country’s minorities.
The protests were organized by the Alliance for Justice and Accountability – an ad-hoc coalition of several South Asian American organizations – Sikhs For Justice, and Trikone, which supports gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender South Asian Americans.
Virali Modi-Parekh, spokeswoman for AJA, told India-West: “We believe that development in India should not be happening at the cost of human rights and freedom.”
“This rock star cannot make up for his rock-bottom performance,” she said, countering the enormous adulation Modi has received from Indian Americans since he took office over 16 months ago.
Violence against religious minorities has increased by over 25 percent since Modi was elected, stated Modi-Parekh, alleging that the prime minister has turned a blind eye to the issue. Of particular concern is the increase in Christian churches being burned down. At a Congressional hearing last June, Joshva Raja, research supervisor, University of Amsterdam, alleged that Christians in India today are targeted and attacked by Hindutva forces and are being supported by the BJP government in India.
Raja claimed there have been 192 attacks on Christians and Christian institutions over the past year, an increase of 75 percent over the previous year.
At the SAP Center, AJA protestors held a “die-in,” with several young people reading out an account of an attack against Muslims, Christians, Dalits, women and other communities. As each person fell to the ground, fake blood was poured over them.
“It was a performance piece to commemorate the rise in Hindutva-related deaths,” said Modi-Parekh.
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